Extended Family
Extended family influenced Ofidean Virginia Mitchell Phillips’ life from the beginning. From birth to age seven she was trained by example from her mother, but there were others whose hearts touched hers and who shaped her future. Aunt Marie taught Ofidean about cleanliness, and how to scrub floors on her hands and knees using a toothbrush to get into the corners. Evangelist Mother Williams took her to Sunday school from the time she was two until she was seven. Mr. Chester pronounced her a poet in the second grade. Sister Albina at St. Benedict the Moore Catholic High School drilled Ofidean in integrity. Father Julian Phelan, who reminded her of St. Francis of Assisi, modeled love in action and taught her to give to the poor. On her own at 14, her extended family included the alteration women at Metz’s Dress Shoppe where she worked to pay for school; German and Polish immigrants who saved their own food to share with her when she came to work hungry after classes.

Trail Blazing
Ofidean completed high school as Valedictorian. Her math and reading teacher, Mrs. Carey, helped her get a scholarship to Cardinal Stritch College in Brown Deer, Wisconsin. She left to marry at age 21 and bore eight children in 10 years. In 1961 she and her family moved to Santa Rosa, California where she attended Sonoma State College. She was the first of her family to graduate from college. More firsts were to follow.

At age 27, she started the South Park Improvement Association in her living room in Santa Rosa and opened a preschool. She subsequently coordinated three other preschools, one of them bi-lingual. At age 34, she was the first Black person to complete a Master’s Degree in Sociology from Sonoma State College and the first Black to teach in the school’s Department of Education. She was the first to direct a supplementary training program for 238 Head Start teachers in Northern California colleges and universities.

While there Ofidean traveled to five African countries with a scholarship from the university of Pittsburgh, wrote an exchange program with Sonoma State College and universities in Ghana and Nigeria, and raised funds to send 15 Black students to Africa in 1972. She was one of the few Black professors teaching in a predominantly White university in the 70’s. She served on the National Policy Board of Union Graduate School to begin the union of Colleges and Universities to give degrees for independent studies using colloquiums as a format.

While on sabbatical with her husband Roy Mitchell who studied history at the University of Toledo in the Teacher Corp Program, Ofidean was the first Black to direct a statewide program for Head Start in curriculum design and training at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

When Roy died at age 38, leaving her a 37-year-old widow with eight children, she returned to California. In 1975 she took a research position with the “Follow Through Program” at Portland State University. She moved to Sherwood, Oregon and her eight children integrated the Newberg public schools.

During these years (1975-78), Ofidean wrote and coordinated an extension program for mature learners with Warner Pacific College and Maranatha Church, started a Mission Committee at Maranatha to support missionaries, coordinated a school for elementary grades, and taught Creative Parenting classes in two counties. In 1978 she wrote the proposal for Give Us This Day, Inc., a complete family agency geared toward parenting girls in foster care. In August 1978 she married Reverend Joshua D. Phillips, who shared her vision for extended families. They became on-call counselors for adoption families, especially trans-racial families. (Parents who adopted children of different races.

The Phillips
The Phillips were the first Black couple to begin a Community Counseling and Family agency in an all-White town, the first to open a respite home to care for children of burned out parents, and the first to begin classes called “The Rainbow Series” for White parents adopting Black children. Ofidean wrote the proposal for Extended Family Homes for the State of Oregon and together they trained parents who kept foster children (informal adoption) until they graduated from high school or formally adopted them into their family as permanent members.

In 1983 Ofidean became the first Black to teach at George Fox University. In the Sociology Department there she initiated an “Adopt a Student” program for upper class students, all White, most of whom had never been in the company of Black people. She engaged Black families who adopted these students for a weekend as part of the class project and the students wrote of their experiences. Her own manuscript, “Of Course You Fit In,” describes the program.

In 1992 Ofidean took a year off from Give Us This Day, Inc. and became the CEO of the 75-year-old Family & Children Services Agency in Battle Creek, Michigan. She was the first Black person to direct the agency. While there she wrote her first published book called "Ashes to Life." Upon her return to Oregon, she founded Women of Purpose International Ministries; a ministry of Reconciliation, Restoration and Renewal of families, ethic groups and religious denominations, based on Romans 8:28 and 2 Corinthians 5:18- 20 and Ephesians 4:16.* Ofidean continued to write and has written 20 books on various subjects, including prayer, family wholeness, many of them children’s books.

Still Reaching Out
Ofidean builds bridges wherever she goes. She uses the gifts God has given her to Reconcile, Restore and Renew. She is embarking on one of the most far-reaching journeys of her life to establish the Fountain of Faith Extended Family Institute (An International Family Network). She maintains that it was destined by God because He loved and she loves because of Jesus Christ. Because of love, lives will be reconciled to God, Restored to wholeness and Renewed for life.

* “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

“Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” 2 Corinthians 18-20

“...Christ...from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” Ephesians 4:16